


You Wished for a War

by raven_aorla



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Revolutionary Era Medicine, Secret Half-Brothers, Sickfic, Stevens was against making sick people bleed more how radical, bloodletting references, emetophobia warning, no actual blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8056621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: A long time ago, a merchant named Thomas Stevens took in the orphaned Alexander Hamilton, who was friends with his son Ned. The boys were said to look remarkably similar. During the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic, brilliant, somewhat controversial Dr. Edward Stevens successfully treated the Treasury Secretary and his wife. Or: an excuse to combine sickfic with an unproved historical theory.





	You Wished for a War

**Author's Note:**

> Look! I finally wrote non-AU Hamilton fic!
> 
> At the beginning of "Right-Hand Man", when Hamilton sings, "As a kid in the Caribbean I wished for a war/I knew that I was poor/I knew it was the only way to rise up," he is quoting a letter 14-year-old Hamilton wrote to Stevens.
> 
> I highly recommend the YA book "Fever 1793" by Laurie Halse Anderson, which I read when I was in middle school. It's been awhile, though. I've done my best not to be flagrantly inaccurate, but as I'm having fun and not doing a research project, I hope you can forgive a bit of fudging.

It’s the heat.

I’m not saying the heat’s what's causing the yellow fever. There are a million guesses at what causes the fever, why it has come now, with such force, and why to Philadelphia. (Insert jokes about Congress being a disease vector, etc.) It’s no hotter than any other summer has been lately, certainly no hotter than I remember St. Croix being.

I’m saying the heat is what is causing a particularly nightmarish haze today, when only a few are daring to walk the streets except when absolutely necessary - mostly the free blacks who’ve been invited to work here, in the hopes they will be as immune as so many of them seem to be from malaria.

There’s a thought. “Alexander, would you characterize this as feeling better or worse than malaria?” While he was fighting Redcoats up and down the country, I was fighting disease all over the Caribbean, and the milder version of yellow fever I caught in the course of that seems to be working as inoculation against this more virulent strain. I'm grateful to be back in America now, when he needs me.

Mrs. Hamilton is finally asleep, the diluted wine having helped a bit. Eliza knows the truth, and it's one of the reasons she agreed to try my less-popular treatment. The children were sent away to be with the Schuylers when it was still possible, before Congress fled, before this city effectively came under quarantine. My wife has mixed feelings about me being away from her side, but she understands the importance of it. The housemaid who was persuaded to stay, and the black nurse who cares for them when I can’t be here and handles more delicate matters with Eliza, are both otherwise occupied.

It’s just Alexander and me. This means I don’t have to be formal, even the level of formality expected of childhood friends, the bare minimum we have to keep up for appearances. In fact, it means I can tease him, try to coax a spark out of him. “For science, Alexander, that’s all. You know how much value I place on science. I need data, and most of my patients don’t get this sort of one-on-one attention from me, with all these opportunities for conversation. I’m not asking for much.”

Alexander succeeds in struggling out of his last piece of clothing. He can barely sit up, but his pride won’t let him concede that bit of territory. “The moment I stop...feeling like my bones are being squeezed...to pieces, Ned, I...am...I’m so...very going to smack you.”

If he ever stops being sharp-tongued to everyone but his wife and children, that’s when I will begin to fear that I can do nothing for him any longer. "I appreciate the gentlemanly warning. Into the bathtub.”

The water is mildly chilled if that, not freezing, but he’s running very hot indeed and he still gasps as I help him in. “You...would think this...would feel good when this, so hot, soo hot, buuuuuuut...it never does.”

“I’m sorry. Would you like me to call Dr. Rush and have him bring all his lovely sharp lancets and a bucket? Bleed you dry?” I have buckets, but I use them like any sane person who doesn’t blindly follow archaic medical notions.

“You start ranting about Rush again and I’ll…”

“Brace yourself.”

“Ws’gonna say drown mys-AHHHH.”

I do my best to pour gradually. “Remember when you fell out of a tree and dislocated your arm and taught me several new French swear words when I popped it back in for you?”

Alexander looks about to say something, but he puts his hand over his mouth and weakly gestures. I hold the empty bucket close to him and holds his hair back while he vomits what little he managed to eat earlier today.

It’s hard to be professional with a friend. It’s even harder to be professional with a friend whom you are never allowed to officially admit to being your half-brother. There’s plenty of speculation, sure, even now, when people see us together. It was especially obvious when Father had orphan Alexander Hamilton come stay with us but didn’t invite James Hamilton, Jr. But Alexander is already a bastard once, enough shame there without giving society yet more scope for dubbing his mother a 'whore'. Meanwhile, I’m trying to wrestle credibility away from these incompetent leeches without all the melodrama our Treasury Secretary carries in his wake. He had an attachment to Hamilton Sr. and wasted a lot of time writing letters to try to get him back. He says nobody needs to know. At least, nobody else. Jamie was pacified a little when told, and it behooved Eliza to know when she was discussing with Alexander who else they'd trust with their children if something happened, so as not to put all their eggs in the Schuyler basket.

Nobody needs to know that Dr. Edward Stevens calls Treasury Secretary Hamilton ‘Alexander’ when we’re alone. Nobody needs to know that when he’s done voiding his stomach, I put the bucket aside and take his hand.

“‘M a grown man,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t pull away. “I was chosen for the Constitutio'n'l…”

I know how much he hates the way illness robs him of dignity and coherence, how much it steals the years from him and makes him that boy dying-but-never-dead in his mother’s arms. He’s shivering, but he needs to cool down. He needs to sit there for awhile longer. I can’t be soft. If he dies because I was soft, I think I’ll go back to academia and go back to studying gastric fluids and let Dr. Kuhn oppose Rush by himself.

“We’re all very proud, though it'd be nice if you fought with Jefferson less - I get palpitations when I read the papers. When I was at King’s College and I got that letter from you…”

“Wroteyoulots.” He’d seethed with frustration at being left behind, especially while being condemned to clerking with no end in sight.

“You did.” I don’t like that he’s gone babbly, but at least he’s following the conversation. “You wished for a war, so you could rise up. I don’t like all those scars it left you, or everything you lost, but you certainly - what’s wrong?”

He takes his hand back and curls in on himself. I can’t make out his mumbling.

“I can give you more bark. I just restocked.”

“Stup’d.”

“I always enjoy it when you say stupid things.” I can’t dry him off and get him into comfortable clothing just yet. I have to watch him shiver.

“Want… Laurens.”

Oh. He wrote to me about Laurens about as much as he wrote to me about Eliza, at different times, or indeed sometimes at the same time. I had to read between the lines (childhood in-jokes and references are nearly as good as a cipher), but I know. Laurens was no more just his friend than I am, but in an entirely different way.

“Love ‘Liza, alsowan’ Laurens.”

“Oh, Alex.” I put a hand on a healed bullet-graze on his arm.

“Fevers in camp, Washi-Washington said stop, you need to rest, and Laurens, he was, you know, there. He was there for the...ugliness. Now he’s - so stupid, he didn’t have to, the war was over, why isn’t he here, we would have found a way, did he think I’d stop needing him the self-destructive fool that he was, why isn’t he here he’s had every fever they’ve ever had in the S’Carol’na swamps I bet, he would be FINE and everythingwouldbebetterif-”

I actually push a strip of willow bark between his teeth. “You’re going to wear yourself out. He wouldn’t want that.” I speak softly, trying to keep the distress out of my own voice. When he isn't so close to delirium, I will invite him to discuss the subject again if he needs to, but he needs to be cool and calm and to eat and sleep, all things he's never been good at even when in full health.

Alexander deflates. He lies back in the tub and dutifully chews on the bark. It won’t take all the pain away, but it’ll dull it, and when he’s not hurting as much he’ll be less likely to get worked up.

“We’re going to have to get some broth in you soon. Your wife’s doing better than you are. I daresay she’ll outlive us all.”

My secret, but always and forever, little brother’s next words are garbled thanks to working on the medicine. That’s fine. I know.

**Author's Note:**

> \- There is no definitive proof of whether or not they were brothers, but the Chernow book states that it's plausible, much of their community thought so, and Secretary of State Timothy Pickering (who chose Stevens to be equivalent-of-ambassador-to-Haiti years after Hamilton's death), was fully convinced of it. 
> 
> ETA: That said, there is evidence to the contrary, such as records that that claim Thomas Stevens being nowhere near Rachel Faucette at the time of Alexander's conception-ish. Who knows? I got a fun story out of it. 
> 
> \- I couldn't find any information on Stevens' mother, so in the spirit of LMM ignoring the Schuyler Brothers for convenience, I have implied she wasn't around. 
> 
> \- It was known that those born in certain regions of Africa, and their near descendants, had a high likelihood of malaria resistance. Unfortunately, resistance to malaria has absolutely nothing to do with resistance to yellow fever. Though they got sick at the same rate as everyone else, the efforts of the free African-American nurses probably had a significant impact on preventing an even worse death toll. Be skeptical of any depiction of 1700s-1800s Philadelphia that doesn't mention free African-Americans, some of whom are successful and middle-class (including some illegitimate Burrs, whoops). 
> 
> \- Everyone knew the first frost of the year would stop the new infections, but not that this was bc it would kill the mosquitoes. The Kuhn/Stevens method didn't help a ton, but unlike the other, it didn't make things worse. Stevens did contribute a major thing to science, which was isolate gastric juices for the first time, and determined a lot about how digestion works. 
> 
> \- Willow bark helped somewhat - chemicals in it were eventually developed into aspirin. 
> 
> \- Just as well that Ned wasn't in the musical. "I've been alone without a family since I was a child..." "ALEXANDER I'M STANDING RIGHT HERE." Then offstage, James Hamilton, Jr. shouts, "YO, WHAT THE F."
> 
> *****
> 
> Commence apologetic-for-the-repetition-but-sincere-because-I-put-all-my-soul-in-this plug:
> 
> I have a published urban fantasy novel you might be interested in. The summary doesn't say so, but six of the major characters are queer in some way or other. I'm amazed they're letting me get away with it. [ Available as ebook and print form on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DSLT3D2/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1529183871&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Donaya+Haymond&dpPl=1&dpID=51cFXjiasBL&ref=plSrch), and in [print from the Barnes & Noble site.](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/seasons-turning-donaya-haymond/1129067787?ean=9780999202654)


End file.
